Hyperdimension Neptunia is owned by Sega, Idea Factory and Compile Heart and whomever else worked on it.

Chapter 60

Looking at her other world counterpart, Blanc tilted her head in confusion. In many ways, the two of them looked similar, but the fact that her other self was wearing a tank top as a shirt and cargo pants and boots made her wonder if she was a day laborer on the side or something.

"Hey, Blanc," Ram had a mischievous grin on her face that obviously meant nothing good, "the other you has boobies."

Blanc felt her eye twitching. "I noticed..." She deadpanned, annoyed that she was flatter than her other self. 'Of ALL the people to lose out to, why do I have to be flatter than myself?!' Sure, her other self wasn't that big, especially when compared to the likes of Vert, but she was still bigger than what Blanc thought she should be.

"So..." The other Blanc walked over and gave her an amused look, which pissed Blanc off. "Wow, it's like looking at a photo of my past with you."

"...Huh?" Blanc asked, confused and curious.

The more busty Blanc sighed and pinched her side by her stomach. "I wish I was as skinny as you are." She grumbled looking down as she pinched her side and sighed. "I can't lose this blasted belly fat."

"Um..." Rom looked at her other elder sister and smiled nervously. "I don't think you're fat." The other Blanc blinked and then gave her a small smile.

"Thank you. You're..." She trailed off, looking confused.

"I'm Rom." The short-haired girl smiled.

"And I'm Ram!" Her twin smiled happily.

Blanc was about to say something when she saw her other self go pale and stare at Rom and Ram as though she was seeing a ghost. "Is something wrong?"

"I..." The other Blanc looked troubled. "I..." She sighed and hung her head. "...Now I remember why I named them that."

"Huh?" Ram asked in confusion. "Named who?"

Blanc gave her a sad smile. "...The first children I ever gave birth two were twin girls whom I named Rom and Ram. Neptune told me stories of you two a long time ago and I named them after you two." She sighed as she looked at Rom and Ram and for a moment, she wasn't seeing them, but she was seeing her daughters, who had whiter skin, due to being part Mole Person. Her Rom, when she was as small as the Rom in front of her had hair that hung loosely and reached down her back. Her Ram had worn her hair in a braided ponytail and always pouted whenever anyone got the two of them confused or even just said Rom's name when they were talking to her. 'Some days were really fun when I was trying to discipline one of them and called them the other one.'

"But I'm not Ram."

"YOU KNOW THAT I MEANT YOU!" Blanc yelled in frustration as she looked at the amount of broken stuff in the room. "...Just how the HELL did you do all of this?"

"...I was playing golf outside and hit the ball through the window?"

Blanc just groaned and hung her head. "...I suggest, you get this cleaned up, before I make your ass so red that you could act as a stop sign."

"AHHH!" Rom yelled, her eyes white and blank as she went to find a broom to clean up.

Blanc sighed as those memories faded away. "Sadly, neither of my children got to know the real me, they..."

"You were a Mole Queen," the other Blanc said, causing her busty self to nod, "so they knew you as that. By the time you weren't a Mole Queen, they were already adults?"

"Sadly, yes." Ultra Blanc sighed and closed her eyes. It's even harder when I think about the fact that none of us ever got to know our children."

"Huh?" Rom, Ram and Blanc all asked the other CPU in confusion.

Ultra Blanc just let out a forlorn sigh. "Do you want to know?" They nodded and she walked over to a chair and plopped down on it, motioning for the others to sit down near her. "I'm glad we decided to move to a private room for this." She muttered before shaking her head. "So, I don't know how much you know, but after we were freed from being hypnotized, I went through a bit of a breakdown and became a drunk. Part of me was furious with what happened, another part missed it because I loved my husband and children and I couldn't stand it."

"So you got drunk?" Blanc asked her other self.

"Yep. Stupidly drunk, I can't remember much from that time." The other Blanc said with her eyes closed. "After getting cleaned up, we met with our, at the time, ex-husbands. After a bit more time, we ended up getting back together with them."

"Wow," Ram said as she listened while Rom fidgeted, "that must have been weird, huh? Didn't he do lots of bad stuff to you?"

Ultra Blanc nodded and scratched her belly just under her tank top. "It was... Weird at first, yes, but just speaking for myself, it didn't take long to warm up to him. But," she sighed again, "Neptune, myself and the others all had a talk after we got back together with our husbands and we all discussed what would likely happen with us." A haunted look came to her face as she looked at the floor. "...We all agreed that even if we had more children in the future, none of us would ever name them, raise them or get to know our children."

"...What?" Blanc asked, her eyes shrinking to pinpricks in shock. "Why?"

"For their protection." Ultra Blanc said as she looked at her counterpart. "Because we didn't know if there were others who wanted to dominate the surface like the old farts who were in charge when they brainwashed us. And we have our enemies, you know? Do you have any idea how much it hurt when we had meetings with our husbands and we had to keep every aspect of our lives a secret? Do you know how much it hurt when there was a formal dance every year to celebrate the peace between the people of the surface and the under cities and we saw our children there, but we couldn't react to them being there?" Tears fell freely from her eyes, but she didn't care as she continued to speak. "I missed so much of my own children's lives. Their first words, the smiles, the tears, the laughter, when they got married, any children they had. Even though those brats called me their aunt, they're the closest things any of us had to having our own children to look over."

"...That's why you were messed up after what the cultists did, wasn't it?" Blanc asked her other self and Ultra Blanc nodded. "...I had no clue."

"We don't like talking about it." Ultra Blanc said as tears continued to fall out of her eyes.

Rom pursed her lips and walked forward, hugging the other version of her elder sister. "I'm sorry. It must have hurt." Ultra Blanc nodded and hugged Rom back before opening up her arm to encourage Ram to join them in the hug. Ram didn't waste time as she rushed in and hugged her other sister as well.

"...Why are you telling me this then?"

Looking at her other self, who was confused, Ultra Blanc smiled even as tears fell from her eyes. "If you can't talk to yourself about your problems, who can you talk to?"

Blanc had nothing to say to that.

(-)

In yet another room of the Basilicom, Noire looked at her other self curiously.

"So, how do you deal with the recoil of heavy guns?" Uni asked. "Nepgear said you had this big cannon on your arm."

"It's one of those things I was testing out, actually." Noire said as she adjusted her glove and grimaced. "I should have made sure that this was properly fitted instead of grabbing a random glove to throw on."

"Here, lemme help." Uni said as she grabbed the glove and pushed on it before frowning as something felt off and gave the hand a hard pull.

"No, wait!" Noire yelped as there was a loud popping sound.

"Huh?" Uni's eyes went white and blank as she pulled the glove, the hand under the glove and what looked like half of Noire's arm at the same time. "AHHH!"

"AHHH!" Hyper Noire yelled as she looked what her sister had done. "Uni! What did you do?!"

"I don't know!" Uni yelled, her hair standing on end. "What the hell?!"

Ultra Noire sighed and closed her good eye. "I was TRYING to warn you that it was loose." She unbuttoned her jacket, revealing her white dress shirt, and slid it off, revealing that she still had two good arms. And, much to Uni and Noire's shock and surprise, there was another arm attached to her shoulder. "I told you, I was testing stuff, including remote prosthetic and stuff."

"HUH?!" Her other self and Uni both screamed in surprise.

"While our medicine is really advanced, there are some people who were born with deformities." Ultra Noire said as she reached up to her left shoulder and undid some clasps, allowing it to fall to the ground with a thud. "Before you ask about genetic engineering, we outlawed that centuries ago."

"Is there a reason for it?" Uni asked as she watched her other big sister flexing her fingers and grimacing. "Something wrong?"

"Just tingly, to make that arm," she nodded to the one in Uni's hand, "work, I had to basically shut off nerve responses and blood flow into this arm. As for why we don't allow for people to work on genetic engineering... Well, we do, but it's done with strict controls and rules in place, but there's always a risk someone will try to "create the perfect CPU" because they found a random CPU Memory that we missed and create a weapon to use against us."

"In that case, it's a smart thing to do." Noire nodded at her other self. "So why do you wear a suit anyway?"

"I like it." Ultra Noire told her other self and put her suit jacket back on. "I took to wearing a suit and tie a long time ago. I like the fact that I'm not giving everyone a free peek at my underwear when I'm in a hurry."

"...Do I have that problem?" Noire asked Uni, who looked away, whistling. "...Uni..."

"Don't get me wrong, I don't mind people staring at me or my underwear," Ultra Noire continued, "but it gets annoying when I have young people who stop to stare at my ass when I rush by."

"You sound like an old woman." Uni pointed out and Ultra Noire narrowed her good eye. "Ah!" Her eyes went white and blank. "Sorry, sorry!"

"No, it's fine, I am over a thousand years old after all." She shook her head. "To be honest, after the first two hundred years, you kind of stop paying attention to the specifics about how old you are unless you're really vain. At this point, I only really care about my age every century or so."

"Um..." Uni looked at Noire's left hand as she handed the fake one back to the one-eyed CPU. "Is there a reason you're wearing an eye-patch or that you used only this arm as a prosthetic?"

"Didn't Neptune tell you about the fact that I was mauled pretty badly?" Ultra Noire asked Uni, who shook her head. "I don't want to go into details, but I nearly died, lost my left arm, right eye and had to have emergency surgery to fix both."

"...Wait, you have your right eye?" Noire asked as she looked at her other self in confusion. "Then why..?"

"I don't like the fact that it's off-color!" Ultra Noire whined as she stomped her foot. "I'd rather have an eye-patch over my right eye forever than see my eye looking off-color!"

Both Uni and Noire sweat-dropped and Noire gave Uni a raised eyebrow. "If I ever get like this over an injury, slap me."

Uni laughed nervously and looked at Ultra Noire. "It can't be that bad, can you just let us see?"

"...Fine." Ultra Noire sighed and reached up, tapping the side of her eye-patch, causing it to pop off, revealing her closed right eye.

"Hold on." Uni said as she walked up to Ultra Noire and looked at the eye carefully. "...Wow, there's some really light scars that have faded away there, but I can only tell because of how close I am."

Ultra Noire grumbled as Uni stepped back and she opened her eye to reveal her eye, before grimacing. "Urgh, I'm going to have such a headache over this."

"Huh..." Noire frowned lightly as she looked at her other self's face. "Your eyes look identical to me."

"You don't get it." Ultra Noire pouted. "It was ORANGE, BRIGHT ORANGE, after the surgery!"

"...You're taking this hard." Noire muttered, before shaking her head. "Then again, I don't know how I'd be if I had my eye ruined and had to have it fixed and it came out wrong."

Ultra Noire closed her eyes and sighed. "I apologize, it's just that when this happened, it was after some dinosaur cultists ruined everything for us and so..."

"I get it, you weren't in the right frame of mind and every time you look at your eye, you're reminded of that, right?" Uni asked and Ultra Noire nodded.

"My frustration just builds up and I need to vent from time to time." Noire said as she laughed softly before looking out the window and smiled lightly.

"What?" Both Uni and Noire asked the other CPU.

"Just admiring how things look in this world, that's all." Ultra Noire said with a serene smile on her face. "When you're used to seeing flying cars, Demons, Aliens and Angels from time to time along with humans, it's nice to see just a simple cityscape."

"...Do people get along with the non-humans?" Noire asked her other self, concerned.

"Hmm, for the most part they all get along." Ultra Noire tapped her chin. "Most of the day to day stuff is done by our alien secretaries who only need us to look over their stuff for an hour a day to make sure everything is done right. We basically just have to act as a mediator if something goes wrong between the different groups."

"Wait, it only takes you an hour to do paperwork?" Uni asked, her eyes white and blank.

Ultra Noire turned to her and nodded. "Yeah, those alien secretaries were the best thing that happened to us. We still need to double check everything that needs a signature and anything that requires special attention needs us to take care of it, but the day to day stuff? Like zoning for new buildings, people putting various small requests that don't need much attention and other small things, for example. We don't need to worry about that as much. It really decreases the amount of stress and exhaustion we have to deal with constantly."

"We should see about hiring them for us." Noire muttered and thought about how much more time she could have to just relax and enjoy herself.

"You just want to do more voice acting and cosplaying." Uni deadpanned with a flat expression on her face, causing Noire's pigtails to shoot straight up and her eyes to go white and blank while the other Noire laughed.

As she watched the sisters argue over whether or not Noire did want to do that, Ultra Noire just smiled as a memory came back to her.

*Flash*

"I can't believe you, Vert!" Noire yelled as she walked into the living room, dripping wet and wearing nothing but a towel on her body. The busty CPU was laying back on a chair, wearing an open robe as she dried off, and was in the middle of playing a game. "You used the last of the conditioner!"

"...I think I might have some in my bag." Vert smiled nervously as Noire gave her an annoyed look. She got up, her robe slipping off of her breasts as they bounced freely, not that either she nor Noire really paid attention to that.

Rolling her eyes as Vert bent over, causing her robe to slide up and reveal everything, Noire huffed and tapped her foot before raising her hand up to catch the bottle that Vert threw to her. "...This is a full bottle, why did you use the last of my conditioner then?"

"Well, there wasn't much in there." Vert said to her, "besides, now you have a full bottle."

"You're damn right." Noire muttered and walked back to her shower. "Can't believe I'm letting you live with me while your place gets renovated."

Vert just giggled and walked back to the chair and slumped down on it.

*End Flashback*

"Well, that was fun." Ultra Noire said softly. She didn't know why she remembered that event, but looking back, she could only smile. Things had been simpler back then after all.

'Maybe one day things will get better.' Ultra Noire thought to herself as she thought about everything that had happened in the past few hundred years.

I felt this would drag on too long if I didn't end it there. I don't want to make it drag on and get boring after all.

But man, feels bomb from Blanc there.